The SCSI staff will be working in advance of the workshops to provide appropriate training for the selected participants. New materials will be developed and existing materials will be refined to meet the needs of the selected participants.

B4.5.1 Participants

Our experience with modeling and computational science training indicates that a modest amount of pre-institute orientation, evaluation, and training allows the participating faculty to derive significantly greater benefit from the workshops. Once teams are selected, detailed surveys will be administered to evaluate the specific preparation levels in the areas of modeling, programming, and network communication. These evaluations will be used by the SCSI staff to develop a pre-institute training plan for each of their participating schools. The staff will identify weaknesses that would detract from the overall Institute participation and will distribute in advance simple tutorial materials; SCSI staff will distribute materials (bibliographies, review papers, and a sample curriculum module) specific to each site. All selected participants will receive user accounts on computational resources located at Shodor.

B4.5.2 Materials

A large number of award-winning computational modules and curriculum materials have been developed over the last several years, and Shodor is actively engaged in developing new materials as part of its commitment to the new Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (PACI) as a partner of the National Computational Science Alliance (NCSA). After the teams have been selected and evaluated by the Institute staff, modifications may be made to existing materials, or new examples or problems may be developed, to match the background of the new participants. Materials that are developed during the academic year by past participants will be collected, evaluated, and adopted for general use and distribution by the Institute staff.